


Taking Inventory

by UrsulaKohl



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: Accounting, F/F, Mongols, Nizam al-Mulk, Oaths & Vows, Revenge, Spoils of War, Sworn friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 14:01:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17489354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/pseuds/UrsulaKohl
Summary: Fatima could read and write in two languages, keep accounts, and process silk thread. Perhaps one of those skills would be useful to a queen.





	Taking Inventory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lightningwaltz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/gifts).



_Mashhad, spring 1221_

Fatima's father was furious when he arrived home, cursed as he settled onto a cushion, and was still fuming when she set the midday meal before him. The food was, admittedly, poor. There was flatbread, grittier than it should have been, and green onion shoots and a little bit of fresh cheese, but the soup was mostly chickpea dust and mint, with a few other stray herbs. It had too much sourness, with none of the balancing richness and sweetness that should have been present. That was life in Mashhad, in those days.

Meals had been particularly sparse lately, with the war coming closer and the peasants crowding in from the countryside. But things had been tight for a few years, ever since Hazarasp bin Yusuf had been granted the right to collect local taxes. He was a tall man, thin, with a patchy black beard and an ingratiating smile. Things were unsettled lately, he had insisted, and the political situation was complex. The town should maintain its own guard and its own walls, to protect the most sacred shrine: it should serve and aid the Shah, as a child honored its parents, rather than waiting for him to send soldiers. Fatima's father had agreed enthusiastically at first, then more grimly as the months passed and Hazarasp's visits continued. 

Fatima's father ripped a piece of bread in half. "The armory is nearly bare."

Fatima was certain that this should not be possible. There should have been racks and racks of crossbows, and neatly stacked, pointed helmets ready for a plume. These days Fatima's father struggled to focus his eyes on columns of numbers, so she had sorted through records for him. She estimated the yields from each orchard and the quantity of silk thread their land could produce, and converted each count from a measure of materials to a possible tax payment. None of the numbers had seemed big enough. But each of those figures should have meant a stack of coins, to be converted to arrows or swords.

Arrows and swords would be needed. The first Mongol army arrived in Khurasan the previous summer. That army moved fast, chasing the Shah. It stopped a few hours' ride north of Mashhad, in Tus. Nobody was sure exactly what had happened, but the people straggling south told stories about mass executions. The conversations Fatima's father had with visitors changed from discussions of rainfall and complaints about disrespectful youth to arguments about whether Mashhad should resist the invaders at all. Hazarasp had smiled reassuringly, smoothing his dark silk coat, and counseled patience. The Shah's son was brave, he said. The city's loyalty would be rewarded. Meanwhile, summer had changed to winter and then to spring, and the Mongol army was returning.

Fatima's father ate for a while in silence. Then he set down his spoon and asked, "Do you know the story of the man who hanged his dog?" 

He seemed to be working his way around to some specific explanation, so Fatima said, "No, father," even though she had read _The Book of Government_ a dozen times.

"The man didn't know why his sheep kept disappearing, when there were no thieves in the area. One day, he came over a hill and found his dog wagging its tail at a huge, fat wolf. The dog mounted the wolf, and then, when he was done, lay down to nap, his head on his paws. Meanwhile, the wolf pounced on one of the sheep and ate her fill, licking her lips and cracking the bones. The man hanged his dog, for betrayal of its duties."

"Did you ever wonder what happened to the wolf?"

"It doesn't matter. The fate of wolves is in the hands of God. But if ever you meet such a faithless dog—human or otherwise—hang him if you can, and poison him if you cannot."

Her father's implication was clear. Fatima asked the obvious question: "Where is Hazarasp?" 

"He is gone. Gone, and his house is nearly empty: just one sad little boy sweeping the floors. But the plum trees in his courtyard are covered in fruit, and the fountain is lined with tiles from China, with fish painted on them in real gold."

* * *

  
_Outside Kabul, summer 1221_

It was dark inside the cart, and hot. Fatima had only a thin linen-cotton undertunic. It stuck to her body in odd ways, and clung to her scabs. She had long since given up trying to talk to the two other women in the cart, or noticing the smell. She just braced herself against the crates and boxes, and hoped the jostling wouldn't hurt too badly that day. She was never sure how many hours went between stopping points.

Fatima was startled when someone pulled aside the curtain at the back of the cart to reveal broad daylight, and even more startled when she realized that the someone was an old woman. She climbed out of the cart after the others, blinking, and accepted a sip of water—it wasn't enough, there was never enough—and a comb. The comb was odd. Fatima had no way to make herself decent; she was barely covering her body, let alone her hair. Yet as a spoil of war, she was decidedly inferior: too tall, too thin, and definitely too old. She made a vain attempt to neaten her hair into some sort of braid. Meanwhile, people were pulling crates out of the cart. Fatima heard clanking, and winced at a clink that sounded like broken glass.

The old woman shoved them into a sort of procession, the three prisoners at the front, a collection of people with crates behind them. They entered a huge, round tent. Fatima expected to meet some minor Mongol princeling—she wouldn't rate a major one—but the people clustered across from the tent's door were focused on a woman. She was a little person with a square face, perhaps a few years older than Fatima, seated on some kind of low stool. She wore a robe of lightweight blue silk that fell around her in waves. Her sleeves swung as she took a sip from a metal goblet.

Fatima was so entranced by the thought of the cool liquid that she almost forgot to kneel. She sank down awkwardly, behind the two other prisoners. The tent's carpets were surprisingly thick and soft.

The woman in blue said something. The old woman translated, "The khatun asks, what are you good for?"

The first girl just sobbed. Fatima had never heard her speak a full sentence. The second lifted her head and said boldly, "I am Chihrazadh, daughter of Ibrahim, one of the leading citizens of Merv."

The khatun smiled, a little sideways, at the word "Merv". Perhaps she gloried that it no longer had citizens, aside from vultures. She spoke, rapidly, and the old woman translated: "The khatun tells you, it doesn't matter who you were, it matters who you will be. She was once a Naiman, and wife to one of the Merkit. Now she is married to the Great Khan's son, and will be a mother of khans. She asks you all again, what good are you?"

Fatima said as firmly as she could, her mouth dry, "I can read and write in two languages, and hold a conversation in three."

The old woman translated Fatima's speech for the khatun, then asked Fatima, "What good is that, when none of those languages are Mongolian?" 

"The great queen has received many gifts," Fatima said, feeling her way. "I, who am the least of them, will make a record of these gifts, so the queen always knows what she possesses and whence it came." There was a crash and a crunch behind her; it sounded like someone had dropped a crate. Without turning, Fatima added, "Also, I know how to pack porcelain so it does not break."

The old woman reported Fatima's words. The khatun was silent, and everyone else in the tent was silent, watching her. Then she laughed. It was a true laugh, her eyes squeezing shut and her cheeks flushing. Sherbet spilled from her goblet onto her robe, darkening the hue, and that made her laugh harder. At last she spoke a few words to her servant, who said to Fatima, "Well, then. The khatun says you may repack the crates, and make your record as you go. When you can speak to her in an appropriate language, return to this tent, and she will reward you."

"I am honored by the great queen's condescension," Fatima said, bowing her head. It was the kind of lie that courtiers told, but Fatima felt a kind of truth underneath it. Her life right now was a shapeless mass, like a blob of cooked silkworm cocoons. A careful hand could reel out her future and twine it into a new form. There might even be a bit of shine.

* * *

  
_By the Tuul River, summer 1224_

Fatima and Töregene Khatun walked beside the river. This was a mark of favor that would simply not have been possible in Khurasan. Even if, by some miracle, the Shah had formed a personal friendship with Fatima's father, they would always have been surrounded by attendants. A simple picnic would have required rows of servants, perhaps an official food taster. Whereas here there was a single attendant, left some ways back with the horses. "I can't trust you with a horse!" Töregene teased. "Or with a bow, either. You might as well be a babe in arms."

"These are great failings," Fatima agreed. "Perhaps I am not a human at all. I might be a gazelle, changed into a woman's shape, yet unable to attack my former companions." 

She felt strange, certainly, as strange as a transformed gazelle might, though not from any particular spell, except the utter unlikeliness of her happiness. She was learning many things from the khatun, beginning with how to ride, after a fashion, and the rudiments of hunting. More important was the web of stories, about cousins and feuds and desperate raids and anticipated campaigns, that had never been written down. Despite her bloody stories, the khatun laughed easily, from fearlessness or amusement or the beauty of a silver birch against blue water. Fatima had always been—not serious, exactly, but thorough, wanting to understand the nature of a thing before she built a joke around it. The khatun collected laughter.

"You are watching me very closely," said Töregene.

"I beg your pardon," Fatima said, pausing in her walk and dropping her eyes.

"No," Töregene said, stepping closer. 

Fatima was aware, suddenly, of how small the khatun was. The top of her head was at a level with Fatima's chin. This seemed a poor measure of her effect on the world.

"I want your friendship, not your obedience," Töregene insisted. 

"You have that," Fatima told her. "Always."

"Will you swear it to me?"

Fatima knelt on the grass beside the river, as one kneels to a ruler, but Töregene sank down beside her, and took her hands. "We are sworn friends," the khatun said. "We share a single life. We do not abandon each other. Each of our lives is a guard for the other. Now, you say it."

Fatima repeated, "I am your sworn friend. We share a life. I will not abandon you, and my life will be as a guard for yours."

"Now we shall love each other!" declared Töregene. She let go of Fatima's hands and cupped her face instead. 

Fatima waited, bemused, as the khatun sniffed each of her cheeks and breathed in the scent of her forehead. When Töregene shifted, beginning to pull her into an embrace, she dared to kiss the khatun's forehead in turn.

"That tickles!" Töregene said, giggling.

"Great queen, did you not know"—Fatima spoke as solemnly as she could, when the khatun's hands were at her sash and her breath was growing short—"that this is a custom of my people?"

"To lick your superiors?"

"To touch our mouths—" But she was lying on the grass, now, with Töregene tracing her lips with one finger and reaching inside her caftan with her other hand. The explanation of the theory of kissing was delayed.

* * *

  
_Karakorum, autumn 1240_

The khan's drinking bouts grew longer and longer. More and more men knelt before the cushioned chair where Töregene Khatun did business, rather than waiting for an hour when the khan might be lucid. One such man wore the white turban of Fatima's homeland. He bore a book of names, and a map. The map showed Khurasan and Persia, with rivers painted in blue and mountains in silver. The names belonged to ministers, to be confirmed in their offices.

Fatima worked through the names that evening, comparing them to records of taxes and tribute, and making notes on possible promotions. Most of the men were known to her only by hearsay, or from previous exercises of this sort. Toward the end, though, proposed for mayor of Nishapur, she found a familiar name: Hazarasp bin Yusuf. 

She might have hissed. Certainly several of Töregene's attendants turned their faces, and the khatun rose up from her cushions and came to lean over Fatima's shoulder. "Who has offended you?"

Fatima set her thumb by the name. "This man is loyal neither to his sovereign nor to his friends. He should not be trusted with a single pen, let alone a city."

"We can have them strike off his head, and deliver it to you, packed in salt."

Fatima twisted toward the khatun. She was smiling. Her teeth were white and pointed, very like a wolf's.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Chocolate Box!
> 
> The oath that Fatima and Töregene swear is a variant of the oath that Temüjin and Jamuqa swear in _The Secret History of the Mongols._ Their presents in this story are less lavish, but their fidelity is greater.
> 
> Thank you to K. for thoughtful feedback!


End file.
